It's 20th November, fast approaching 7pm - the start time for Mission Silence, the world's first sponsored silence event. I am on the phone to my best friend who asks if I've remembered to change my answer machine message but I'd completely forgotten.

It was without a doubt the most challenging 48 hours of my life. It's our natural instant to talk and the mental energy it took to stop the words in my mind from escaping my mouth was exhausting. For the first few hours I felt it necessary to have tape over my mouth.

For people with progressive MS, the treatment landscape couldn't be more different. There is nothing that can stop their MS from getting worse, nothing to stop it progressing. All people can hope for is that they can gain access to a handful of licensed symptom relief medicines on the NHS...

Multiple Sclerosis is a tough disease. It put me in a tilt/recline wheelchair at age 48. Yet I consider it one of the most profound gifts I have ever receive because that time in the wheelchair transformed how I thought about medicine and the type of medicine that I now practice.

It's unacceptable that so many people with MS are not able to access the treatment, services and support they require as a result of where they live and I'd urge people to support the MS Society's Treat Me Right campaign.

Medical associations have begun to discount CCSVI now that more evidence has emerged, but the story of CCSVI serves as an important example of the need for rigorous, randomised, controlled clinical trials of medical treatments before they are unleashed on a desperate patient population.

The misnomer that we even have a benefit culture with disabled people ready to exploit and sit comfortably needs quashing. Make no mistake, the benefit system does not hand out much money at all to the individual, and it's a system full of stigma.

Clark, now 26, was no stranger to the ravages of M.S. - having watched his stepfather suffer and ultimately pass away from the illness, Clark is all to aware of what the condition can do to families and patients. Clark was less than enamoured with the treatments on offer to him.

Coming from Australia, making the move to the UK to embark on the travels of a lifetime is a very exciting experience - one that I undertook in 2006. I still find myself sitting in my share-house in West London six years later.